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12 comments on “Idiot fucking bureaucrats”

This is clearly insane. The mind boggles. She’s clearly female, therefore why can’t she get the same rights a transsexual would have – a birth certificate record in her (much more than merely apparent) sex?

She could apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate like a trans person. It takes two years from application to grant, her marriage is still invalid, but she could marry right now, as a same-sex marriage and, provided her husband consents, retain the marriage through her transition.

From trans people’s point of view, they’re in the same (legal) position as her; they were given the wrong sex on their birth certificates too and they just want it correcting to match their reality, so why should she get any better treatment than them.

I really can’t see how Schedule 4 of the Gender Recognition Act applies? Anyway, it says that the marriage _is voidable_, not that the marriage is void. Now, it is entirely up to the Church that married her whether they consider her church-wed* but she must, at least, retain the civil equivalent.

* The CofE do come up with some nonsense from time to time. I can imagine the conversation up here in the SEC: “Are you a woman?” “Yes.” “How do you know you are a ‘real woman’ in accordance with ancient church doctrine?” “I’ve given birth to five kids.” “Okay, your marriage is valid in church law. Sod the GRO.”

You need a diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria to get a Gender Recognition Certificate. (Section 2 of the Gender Recognition Act 2004) She can’t get a diagnosis, because she does not and presumably has never had Gender Dysphoria. This puts her in the same position as someone born with an intersex condition, registered male at birth but who grows up as a woman and has kids.

What is unusual in this case is not that it has happened, it is that it has made the press.